To Favor the Seller or the End User ? The million dollar ecommerce question.

This question has not been asked for the first time. This has been a business problem for years now for all the trade facilitators. We have heard this before in Electronic transaction processing where Visa and Master card are known for their Merchant friendly stance the Amex on the other hand is the brand loved by the users. For E commerce market place in India this is a new debate and as the brands evolve their perception too evolves.

Lets understand how the three major market places in India differ from each other.

Snap Deal is known to be hugely Seller-centric. Their business model revolves around enabling and supporting sellers. Snap Deal doesn’t enjoys a huge brand recognition among the users. The philosophy revolves around getting maximum sellers and hence more products, Which would eventually bring more users on the site. The underlying notion here is that the consumers love bargains and they don’t have much brand preference. So if you have good bargain the user will buy irrespective of whatever the marketplace is.

Amazon is clearly the market leader and is the success every one wants to emulate. Jeff Bezos is a poster child for eCommerce fortunes. Amazon is amazingly user loving business. They have a solid reputation of customer and after sales service. Customers swear by Amazon’s deliveries, customer support and shopping experience. I personally had couple of amazing experiences with Amazon in US, on the first instance they promptly replaced a product free of cost, lost by usps. On the second instance they refunded me the extra shipping money that I paid by mistake (forgot to choose free shipping even after adding fillers to take it to $35). As the above two experience indicate that Amazon is willing to go any way to ensure customer satisfaction and that the primary reason for their success. Again their priority is very different from Snap Deal. We are yet to see what philosophy they will employ for India as its a very different market compared to US / Europe. As the early signs show they still seems to be sticking with their User friendly policies.

Flipkart started off as Amazon clone in India. They had similar policy of being customer oriented but they are have had their share of setbacks and changes in philosophy. Personally I didn’t liked the idea of not having a mobile website, I don;t think customers have taken it kindly. I also think that flipkart is under a huge baggage of expectations. When they started they were the poster child of customer service. Their one day deliveries and express returns won them many fans. But I think like any technology company Flipkart too is trying to find the balance between sustainability and perfection.

We believe that the reason Why Amazon has been instrumental in winning the customers all across the globe is because of their superior buyer focus. So the one who controls the buyers controls the ecommerce universe.

About The Author

Sucker for Growth Hacking and Disruptive innovation, Global brand consulting and digital marketing exposure, Passionate about cooking and insightful conversations. I am still in process of realization of self.